United Utilities Case Study

Customer Profile

United Utilities PLC is a member of the FTSE 100 and employs over 17,000 people.

Its principal activities are managing and operating the regulated electricity distribution, water and wastewater networks in North West England, and a region with a population of around 7 million.

As well as operating utility networks in the North West, the group also owns two support services businesses: United Utilities Contract Solutions and Vertex. These businesses apply the group's core skills of infrastructure management and business process management in the provision of services to others.

Customer Challenge

Reduce operating expenditure.

Obtain a view of current infrastructure after a number of years of extensive procurement.

Obtain single view of existing support contracts and produce a workable support framework for asset management moving forward.

Multiple contracts with no consistent start and end date.

Problem with budgeting for future expenditure.

Solution Summary

WTL performed an audit of existing support contracts and cross referenced existing infrastructure to produce an asset registry at that point in time.

After analysing the discrepancies between the two sets of data; WTL put forward an option for the consolidation and co-termination of over 50 contracts into eight contracts, segmented into logical areas of infrastructure for future asset management and support level agreements.

Results and Benefits of the Project

Overall cost savings for three years calculated at £2mn.

A single asset registry of all IT infrastructure and software.

Reduction in operating expenditure and transparency for ongoing budgetary purposes.

Manageable view of contracts in place.

UU now have the correct level of support required to under-pin exact business requirements.

Total flexibility to add/remove equipment.

clients testimonials

"WTL showed a thorough understanding of TRL's needs especially the wider IT infrastructure to which the new system would interface. WTL worked very hard to meet delivery deadlines and were accommodating when these changed!" - Mohamed Ismail- Research Engineer, Toshiba Research

"One of the biggest factors in choosing WTL was their experience and professionalism which gave us the confidence that the job would be completed on time and to budget." - Pete Gain, Enterprise Technology Specialist, SAS UK

"WTL performed an audit of existing support contracts and cross referenced existing infrastructure to produce an asset registry at that point in time" - United Utilities